The safety of the food supply has become an increasingly visible
global public health issue. Outbreaks of foodborne illness are seen as a
major cause of morbidity, mortality, and economic burden. The cause of
many outbreaks remains unresolved, and issues such as increased
international trade, changes in eating habits, and increased travel
abroad complicate investigations.

Persistent outbreaks that may directly affect public health,
industry, and trade require the immediate attention of the nation's
food safety team.

The Agricultural Research Service's national program on Food
Safety provides, through research, the means to ensure that food and
feed meet foreign and domestic regulatory requirements and are safe for
consumers. The program's research, described in its 2011-2015
Strategic Action Plan (available as a pdf at tinyurl.
com/FoodSafetyPlan) seeks ways to assess, control, or eliminate
potentially harmful food contaminants, including both introduced and
naturally occurring pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and parasites, as well
as toxins and non-biological-based chemical contaminants, mycotoxins,
and plant toxins.

Food safety research has changed during the past decade, moving
past simple surveillance procedures to asking complex questions relative
to public health. The food chain is a single entity, where each stage of
production, processing, and distribution is part of a larger system.
Consequently, the program is creative, considering alternate
perspectives, exploiting new opportunities and technologies, and
crossing conventional boundaries.

Safe food is not just a local issue; it's a global one.
Therefore, ARS's efforts involve both national and international
collaborations through formal and informal partnerships. Accomplishments
and outcomes from research efforts benefit agencies both here (like the
U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection
Service, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency) and abroad (the United Kingdom's
Food Standards Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, and the World
Health Organization), as well as commodity organizations, industry, and
consumers.

During the past few years, there have been many accomplishments
from the ARS Food Safety national program. A new method was developed to
detect Shiga-toxin-producing non-0157:H7 enterohemorrhagic E. coli,
which causes an illness in humans similar to that caused by E. coli
0157:H7. And dioxin surveys have substantiated the safety of the U.S.
meat and poultry supply here and abroad.

Other new technologies include a process imaging system for the
USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service to detect small cracks, blood
spots, and structural deformities in eggshells and a process for
detecting ricin, staphylococcal enterotoxins, and botulinum neurotoxins
in foods. These new technologies are superior to any others that were
commercially available.

Another new technology, called "QuEChERS," was developed
to monitor chemical residues in foods. The method was successfully
validated for implementation in regulatory monitoring labs in the United
States, the European Union, and other countries and is considered the
gold standard for residue detection.

Other research endeavors include determining a baseline for the
environmental prevalence of E. coli 0157 and non-0157 E. coli in the
Salinas Valley, providing the first epidemiological data in the area
known as the "Salad Bowl of America." This was in
collaboration with the University of California-Davis and the USDA
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's Wildlife
Services-California.

Our researchers are also conducting studies to better understand
the long-term effects of antibiotic use and find alternatives to control
foodborne pathogens. The ARS Food Safety national program involves
extensive national and international collaborations and scientific
exchanges with many sources. Our scientists work with the Center for
Food Safety Engineering at Purdue University to develop new technology
platforms for improving microbial and chemical hazard detection. We
contribute to Combase, the international database resource on the
behavior of pathogens in foods. We work with various international
partners in the European Commission on integrated projects such as
MycoRed, which aims to find strategies to reduce mycotoxins in feed and
food. Work is also under way with the Shanghai Jiao-Tong University in
China; the Academy of Finland; Teagasc and University College in Dublin,
Ireland; the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague, Czech Republic;
the National Veterinary Institute in Oslo, Norway; the University of
Tasmania in Tasmania, Australia; the International Institute of Tropical
Agriculture in Nigeria, Africa; and the Institute of Food Research and
the Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom.

No single program can solve the food safety challenges and issues
that confront us now or in the future. Multidisciplinary collaborations
are necessary to integrate resources and develop strategies for solving
specific problems. In this way, the research program as a whole is
expected to substantially enhance the global safety of the food supply.